Google My Business Product Expert and Local SEO Consultant at Online Ownership
Uk
Joined June 2011
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Tim Capper retweeted
If companies start messing with agents like Google is messing with scrapers now, then the entire agent market could get hammered. Imagine your agent ends up returning bad data, the wrong products, wrong pricing, or worse? -> Websites are closing their doors to AI agents
"In recent weeks, users of services like Meta’s Muse, xAI’s Grok, OpenAI’s Dots, and Instinct have reported blocks preventing their AI agents from performing tasks across top websites. Yelp told TechCrunch that it only allows AI agents that pay for its data licensing program, while Delta Air Lines is preventing them from booking tickets on behalf of users. JPMorgan Chase and Charles Schwab have also confirmed that they’re blocking AI agents from accessing accounts due to security concerns. Some users say sites that previously worked with their AI agent are no longer accessible, including Cars .com and Amtrak, suggesting other companies could be quietly blocking them."
"The Verge reached out to OpenAI and Google with requests for comments on the roadblocks their AI agents are facing but didn’t immediately hear back. Instinct declined to comment."
theverge.com/ai-artificial-i…
Tim Capper retweeted
I'm now seeing some very serious fuckery by Google on SERP Page 2 served to trackers. For commercial queries:
- Page 1 includes things like alternative locations to the users.
- Page 2 sometimes replaces the main entity altogether.
The giveaway is in PAA, Maps, AIOs etc.
Tim Capper retweeted
Google updated my favourite document - their guidance on creating helpful content.
They added more to help us understand and improve the "main content" of our pages.
Here is a blog post and video with my thoughts.
mariehaynes.com/main-content…
Tim Capper retweeted
Focus on Local? Important to know:
*If a suggested edit requires your review, you may receive an email or an in-product notification. Once notified, you have 4 days to accept or reject the suggestion.
*If you don’t respond within 4 days, Google may automatically publish the update if it is supported by other publicly available information, such as your business website.
Google Business Profiles gives you only four days to reject a user suggested edit before using it on your local listing
seroundtable.com/google-busi…
Tim Capper retweeted
You Know How I Know That Google Is Not Doing So Great? They Are Running Gun Ads Now BWHAHAHAHA Jesus.
#PPCchat
Tim Capper retweeted
Oh it's so much worse than that!
1. To win in AI you have to win in search.
2. To win in search you have to blend in.
Conform to the template.
Just make sure you fit.
Avoid being unique.
Be average.
🤮
This is doing real harm to the web ecosystem and Google is to blame.
Tim Capper retweeted
Mad Ed’s Net Zero energy policy has made us so secure that we spent £84 BILLION on buying oil, gas and electricity from abroad last year and killed off jobs and revenue from our own North Sea fields!
“buy a torch and have 3 days worth of food” … everything is fine 🤡
Tim Capper retweeted
Wow, rivals will receive some 'user interaction signal' data like clicks, returns to the results page, hovering, scrolling, swiping and viewing duration -> Google’s European licensing program will give eligible search engines access to clicks, rankings and user-behavior signals that website owners do not receive through Search Console
"Google will begin providing licensing agreements on September 17, with data samples available from November 16. The data goes further than the information Google gives publishers through Search Console."
"Under the European Commission’s binding measures, competitors can receive the URLs shown in search results, their positions and details about how users interacted with them. That includes clicks, returns to the results page, hovering, scrolling, swiping and viewing duration."
searchenginewatch.com/google…
Tim Capper retweeted
My talk at BrightonSEO last week turned out to be the most shared of the entire event. 🥳
Just one slight issue: It hasn't happened yet, I didn't give any talks, and the quote is made up.
I know @lilyraynyc has had these fake quotes attributed to her, but it's weird to see for myself.
I wonder how many end up/will end up influencing AI responses.
Tim Capper retweeted
If you're interested in the August spam update, I published a video covering the update and the four case studies I covered in my blog post. If you wanted some additional color regarding the update, and those cases, then you should check out the video. Covers 'scaled content abuse', AI-generated content, programmatic content, 'Malicious functionality', and more. I end the video with tips and recommendations for site owners that have been impacted.
youtube.com/watch?v=Bm1TJ-eu…
Tim Capper retweeted
“SEO is nosy. We crawl, compare and measure everything, then spend an unhealthy amount of time asking why one thing behaves differently from another. The website is only the start.”
Excellent new piece by @jonoalderson
jonoalderson.com/conjecture/…
Tim Capper retweeted
Google's biggest ranking "buckets", according to evidence collected at its antitrust trial, are:
1. Topicality: How relevant is the page to a topic/query. Heavily determined by the "ABC" ranking signals:
• Anchors - the links pointing to the page
• Body - the text on the page
• Clicks - user click signals to determine relevance
2. Navboost: a re-ranking system that uses 13 months of user click data to adjust search results (first/long/last clicks)
3. Quality (Q*): One of Google's most important signals, based on site authority + quality adjustments (e.g., Panda, Helpful Content, spam)
SEOs—including yours truly—often get distracted by shiny things. But focusing on these three ranking buckets will likely account for 80-90% of your Google visibility.
Tim Capper retweeted
Great post. OpenAI has a long way to go to address spam. Lily digs into what looks to be happening now with ChatGPT.
From Lily: "I see a lot of this as an indication that SEO matters more than ever. Because ChatGPT appears to lean on major search indices (directly or through RAG partners), ranking well in search is still what feeds the fan-out, along with ensuring your brand has the right information when its pages are directly searched for."
New on my Substack: I spent the past few months watching how ChatGPT's fan-out queries have been evolving and paying close attention to the awesome research being done in our space on this topic. My interpretation is that I think the site: operator is being used as a way to combat spam in ChatGPT's answers, and to produce better quality results.
I pulled together the recent research from @DavidKonitzny, @chris_nectiv, @resoneo, @suganthan, @MalteLandwehr and others, alongside my own testing, and the research is converging on the same story:
⭐ ChatGPT is running way more searches per prompt than it did a year ago, including for free/cheaper tiers (single fan-out prompts dropped from 94% to 43.5% when 5.6 became the default, per Peec AI)
⭐ A huge share of those searches are now scoped with site: operators, and the word "official" keeps climbing as a top term in fan-out queries
⭐ The domains it scopes to skew heavily toward high-authority: official brand pages, .gov sites, .org sites, established review platforms, and Reddit. In one batch of ~20 legal prompts I tested, every single response cited only .gov domains 👀
⭐ Meanwhile, URL retrieval is going up while unique domains cited is going down. More pages are being considered for the response, while fewer pages are being cited.
My theory: OpenAI is experimenting with limiting its searches to places it already trusts, which is one way of managing the quality of retrieved information. It reminds me of the early days of Google's E-E-A-T, but this time, ChatGPT style. And with 5.6 Luna becoming the default for free users (90%+ of ChatGPT usage), this behavior isn't limited to paid tier users anymore.
There are also risks involved in this approach, including ChatGPT constructing site: searches against wrong (and sometimes parked, purchasable) domains, which @MalteLandwehr covered in a great post recently.
Check out the full article, with all the data attributed to whoever ran it, plus what I'd actually do about it as an SEO is linked below in the comments.
I'm curious whether others are seeing the same patterns, especially the site: queries showing up in your GSC and Bing Webmaster Tools reporting.
lilyraynyc.substack.com/p/wh…
Tim Capper retweeted
Under a Restore Britain Government, private school fees will become tax-deductible and that education will be exempt from VAT.
If parents wish to fund their own children's schooling, good - let's encourage it. We'll all benefit.
Tim Capper retweeted
But it's not 9/15 yet :) -> Report That Cloudflare AI Bot Blocking Prevents Googlebot and Bingbot From Indexing Sites
"In it’s official announcement states that beginning September 15 Cloudflare will begin blocking mixed-usage bots, which are bots like Googlebot that simultaneously index websites for search and collect data AI training. The effect is that Cloudflare will block Googlebot."
"That kind of blocking is supposed to go into effect in September so it’s curious that someone is reporting that this is happening right now."
searchenginejournal.com/repo… via @martinibuster
Tim Capper retweeted
.@googlechrome if you got any slower you'd be moving backwards I'm going to have to find another browser if you do not fix the bloat of this one. Literally waiting 30 seconds for to close a freaking screen.
Tim Capper retweeted
Google fined $1 billion by the EU under the DMA over search and Google Play anti-competitive behavior seroundtable.com/eu-fines-go…
Tim Capper retweeted
The new Hotel Multi-Pack in Google's EU hotel SERPs raises an important question:
How are hotels selected under each OTA?
Is that shortlist determined by:
· A direct connectivity?
• the OTA's ranking?
• Google's ranking?
• availability?
• relevance?
• commercial signals?
Tim Capper retweeted
Consumer trust in AI search is falling. Fast.
Last year, 82% of consumers found AI more helpful than traditional search.
Today? That number is 54%.
(That's from Fractl's new survey of 1,000+ consumers)
So in twelve months, trust in AI search dropped almost 30 points.
In fact, Baby Boomers (63%) are now MORE likely than Gen Z (47%) to find AI helpful.
This actually makes sense:
Gen Z uses AI search the most. So they're going to catch more mistakes than boomers.
The key takeaway here: people no longer blindly trust AI answers.
Instead, they VERIFY.
Specifically, they check third party reviews, Reddit, your actual site, and more.
Which means showing up in AI answers is only half the job for brands now.
The other half is showing up in places that people use to fact-check what the AI just told them.
👍🏻
